Guardiola rules out repeating the triple crown and complains about the calendar

The official season starts this Friday (11) for the manchester city, with the starting game of the English Championship, against Burnley. Current champion, and owner of the FA Cup and Champions League titles, the Pep Guardiola start as favorite, but the coach was soon asking the crowd for patience, saying that repeating the triple crown “is impossible”.

With a season of more games and exhausting ahead, he complained about the calendar and avoided talking about the Brazilian Lucas Paquetáwhom he appointed as reinforcement.

Guardiola had no doubt that in his first official interview for the new season, the subject of titles would prevail. And he showed enormous sincerity when he said that the achievement of 2022/23 must be saved for history and that it is something isolated for any giant of world football.

“It’s something very rare and we must be aware of that. It was good, but it’s over, and now we’re starting from scratch. History shows. When you achieve something like we did, it’s almost impossible to repeat”, he said, sincere. “We climbed the highest mountain last season, but now we come down that mountain and we’ll start like everyone else.”

Guardiola has been irritated with UEFA and FIFA over their ever-increasing calendars. The new Club World Cup, with 32 teams, for example, should not exist in his vision. “It feels like yesterday (last season) ended and we’ve started again,” he said, feeling “tired.” “We are starting from zero, we go game by game and it is not good to think about the title already in August or September”, he showed humility. “We go day after day, always trying to improve.

He stressed, however, that City, more targeted by opponents, will have a lot of difficulty in this start. “Our mindset will dictate how the season goes. We need to try to put in a good performance against Burnley, then Newcastle and then Sheffield United. It won’t be easy.”

About the broad calendar, he gave a nudge to the entities that demand the presence of coaches in their meetings, but he does not listen to them.

“Sometimes there were meetings with UEFA and the Premier League (English Premier League administrators). And we were there. It’s normal to play football, but we don’t have enough days,” he raged. “People say we play in the same conditions as other Premier League teams. We don’t. We play more than other teams, much more. We’ll play Newcastle on a Saturday after playing Sevilla on Wednesday Europe, the 16th)”, fired.

The coach revealed that with series games, he can’t even rest his team. “We can’t give players a day off. UEFA decides, Fifa decides, Premier League decides and clubs in Europe should decide. But I don’t think anything will change. When they invite us to these meetings, we are busy with a game to play for ourselves.” prepare, always without time.”

Trying to reinforce the squad after some departures, such as that of the experienced Mahrez, Guardiola asked for the arrival of the Brazilian Lucas Paquetá. But he avoided talking about the possible reinforcement. “I’m not going to answer about Paquetá. He’s a West Ham player”, he avoided.